Even Georgia, O'Keyf noticed that on the surface of her paintings, there are bubbles of the size of the foam. For decades, environmentalists and scientists assumed that these tiny bouts were sandy, lifted from the New Mexico Desert, where K & K lived and worked. But as appearances began to grow, spread and ultimately flake off, people moved from interesting to interested.

A multidisciplinary team from the Northwest University and the Georgia Museum The Kiff in Santa Fe, New Mexico, has now diagnosed with a strange illness of paint. Acids commonly used as a binder in paints.

Inspired by the research, the team has developed a new, hand-held tool that can easily and effortlessly map and control works of art. The tool allows researchers to closely monitor the performances to better understand what conditions make the protrusions grow, compress, or erupt. "Free fatty acids in pigmentation media react with lead and zinc pigments," said Mark Walton. Professor of Material Science and Engineering Research at the Northwestern School of Engineers, who led the research. "These metal soaps began to aggregate, push the surface of the paint and shape something that looks like acne."

"If we can easily measure, characterize and document these cute performances over and over again with little cost to the museum, then we can watch them as they develop," said Oliver Kossaire, associate professor of computer science at McCormick, who led technology development. "It can help conservatives diagnose health and prescribe treatment options for damaged works of art."

Walton, co-director of the Center for Art Research, collaborating between the Northwest and the Chicago Institute The topic of research and technology research at a press briefing on February 16 at the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in Washington DC, DC

The Briefing, "Art Conservation Leverages Advanced Scientific Knowhow," will be held at 9 am EST in Balcony A Marriott Wardman Park

Cossairt will present a study at a scientific session the next day. His talk "Diagnostics of Computer Dyeing Disease: The Case of Georgia, Kiff", is part of the session "Medicine, Computer & Computer Science and Art: Learning through Technologies "(from 8 to 9:30 PM EST 17th th). , Room 2, Marriott Wardman Park).

The professor of Northwestern University Oliver Kossart collects superficial metrology of the "Ritz Tower" of Georgia, O & # 39; Kiffe. the device. Credit: Northwest University

The AAAS scientific session is organized by Francesca Casado, executive director for conservation and science of Grainger at the Institute of the Arts and co-director of the Center for Scientific Research in the Arts.

Dangerous disease

Almost all of Georgia's pictures of Kiffe have a certain degree of harm from the formation of soap. Although some of the cases of acne are in the early stages of development and can only be considered with ultraviolet imaging, others are more advanced and may be visible to the naked eye. Conservatives have restored some paintings, where the damage is more pronounced, but the performances continue to return.

"The rate of deterioration is one of the most important issues of the study," said Dale Croncright, Head of the Department of Preservation of the Museum of Georgia, O & # 39; Kif. "There seems to be some correlation between the number of times when the pictures traveled to public exhibitions, as well as the size and maturity of the surface rupture. The more frequent the pictures were traversed, the more likely the performances will be greater and more

Walton and his team at the Center art research studies how fast the process can move, causing a deterioration of the metal soap in surrogate paintings, and also have decades of detailed information from Georgia's Keeffe Museum, which documented the various environments that various parts felt

"Once we understand what environmental conditions they were in, which varieties of relative humidity, which temperatures, whether they were in direct sunlight, we can assign a special environment with special conditions , which will allow art to survive for a very long period of time, "said Walton.

These findings can also be used wider than O'Keefe's masterpieces.

"If we can solve this problem, we will preserve our cultural heritage for future generations," Walton said.

From science fiction to non-fiction

Cossairt compares his hand tool with the Star Trek tricolor. Fans of the show smell of how their favorite heroes use a pocket device to explore unfamiliar territories, study inanimate objects and diagnose the disease

Instead of evaluating a healthy person (or someone else's), a tool developed in the lab Cossairt, can help diagnose the health of the picture. He uses an LCD and camera, already available on smartphones and tablets. With a simple wave on the surface of the picture, the application quickly digest the exact, 3-D surface structure of the work, or metrology. It can then subtract the color of the work to help researchers detect any deviations in the form of a surface that do not come from smears or textures of the canvas.

"It looks like a" tricorder "of measurement tools," said Kossart. "It can give you extremely accurate measurements, but also something that you can simply pull out of your pocket."

The application uses a light source from a mobile device – either an LED flash, or an LCD display – to reflect the light from the picture surface and capture these reflections through the camera. The image is then processed using special algorithms developed by Aggelos Katsaggelos in Northwestern to extract surface shape information.

"We collect a lot of data in an efficient, successful way, but then we need to process the data," said Katsaggelos, Professor Joseph Cummings of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at McCormick. "Technology uses machine learning to distinguish whether there is a softening texture or something benign, like a brush stroke. Then, for performances, we extract the statistics – density, size, and shape."

Compare this handheld device with the large, bulky equipment that is currently needed to display the metrology of the painting. Primary technique, which is called the formation of a reflection transformation image, requires a large dome with several light sources and expensive installation.

"We are trying to make it much easier, much cheaper and more affordable to reduce the bar to use," said the Associate.